A Cisco Router Lab is a hands-on practice environment for learning, configuring, and troubleshooting Cisco networks from the foundational CCNA level all the way to the expert CCIE level.
This hands-on lab configures GLBP between two routers to achieve load balancing across both routers simultaneously, verifying that different hosts receive different virtual MAC addresses and therefore route through different physical gateways.
This hands-on lab configures VRRP between two routers as the open-standard alternative to HSRP, using a real interface address as the virtual IP, and verifies Master/Backup roles and automatic failover behavior.
This hands-on lab configures a standard numbered ACL to permit traffic from a specific subnet while denying everything else, applies it to the correct interface and direction, and verifies both permitted and denied traffic behave as expected.
This hands-on lab configures an extended numbered ACL to permit only specific traffic types by source, destination, protocol, and port, applying it close to the source and verifying granular filtering that a standard ACL could never achieve.
This hands-on lab configures a named extended ACL, demonstrating how a descriptive name replaces a numeric identifier and how individual entries can be edited by sequence number without recreating the entire list.
This hands-on lab configures a standard ACL applied specifically to a router's VTY lines to restrict remote management access to a single trusted management subnet, verifying both permitted and blocked SSH connection attempts.
This hands-on lab configures static NAT to provide a consistent, permanent public IP address for an internal server, verifying inbound connections from the internet reach the server correctly through the translated address.
This hands-on lab configures dynamic NAT using a pool of public addresses, verifying that internal hosts are assigned public addresses from the pool on a first-come, first-served basis and that translations expire once idle.
This hands-on lab configures Port Address Translation using the overload keyword, allowing many internal hosts to share a single public IP address simultaneously, and verifies each host is distinguished by a unique translated port number.
This hands-on lab configures a router as a DHCP server for one subnet and configures DHCP relay (ip helper-address) so clients on a separate remote subnet can reach that same centralized server, verifying both scenarios independently.
This hands-on lab configures one router as an NTP server with a manually set clock and a second router as an NTP client synchronizing to it, verifying the client's clock converges to match the server over the network.
This hands-on lab configures a router to send log messages to a centralized syslog server, sets an appropriate logging severity level, and verifies messages are actually received and correctly categorized on the server side.
